“Is that you, Trumbull…?” The decidedly unimpressed reply came back in an instant. “Son of a bitch…!” A second, longer pause did Trumbull’s confidence no good whatsoever. “Okay, kid… this is how we’ll play it. Don’t use your missiles on the fighters: bombers take priority. Fighters’ll need to come in for a strafing run if they want to do any damage, and that’ll be close enough for the Tunguskas to take them on with cannon, but the bombers can stay well out of range. I’ll fire first… wait for mine to hit before releasing your AMRAAMs: we can’t afford to have any duplication of targets. Once we’re both out, we can go in with cannon. The Tunguska’s missiles will take over once we’re out of ammo, but they only have a slant range of about twelve miles, so we’ve gotta do what we can before the Krauts get that close…!”
“Roger, Phoenix-One,” Trumbull acknowledged, speaking faster as he started to feel more comfortable with the controls and his professionalism began to take over. “Reading you loud and clear…” His mind ran through the procedures he’d learned in computer simulators, and practised many times on training flights with Thorne, switching the F-35E’s APG-81 radar system over to air search mode and arming his AIM-120D AMRAAM missiles.
In stealthy flight modes, the Lightning II carried all its weapons internally, and on aerial combat missions could carry just two AIM-120s and two AIM-9X Sidewinders within its pair if fuselage weapons bays. The F-35 also possessed the option to carry extra ordnance in non-stealthy modes however, and possessed numerous wing and fuselage hardpoints for just such situations. The aircraft’s 25mm GAU-22/A four-barrelled rotary cannon was mounted in a stealthy pod beneath its centreline fuselage pod, while each wing was loaded with an extra five AIM-120s just as the F-35E had been at the time of the first attack three days earlier.
“You an ace, Trumbull…?” Davies’ inquiry was short and sharp, and Trumbull finally caught sight of the Raptor far below him as it roared from the end of the Hindsight runway at full afterburner. The F-22 took longer to get into the air, but it would make up for that in very short order once actually airborne.
“Affirmative, Phoenix-One: eighteen confirmed kills…”
“I guess you’ll do just fine, then — just remember to keep your eyes on your altimeter and stay out of the Tunguskas’ four thousand metre ‘exclusion zone’: we’ve deactivated the safeguards on their IFF transponders after the last attack, and they’re now free to fire on anything that comes into range, friendly or otherwise. The air overhead’s gonna get real busy soon, and those boys at the fire controls will have their hands full trying to work out who’s who… better if we make sure they only have Germans to shoot at! Good luck, buddy… over and out!”
Oberstleutnant Johann Bauer sat at the controls of his B-10A strategic bomber as the North Sea slipped past almost 10,000m below. The first twenty aircraft of Staff Flight and I/SKG1 were now just seventy kilometres from their target at Scapa Flow, flying in a three-tiered box formation that could supply excellent concentrations of massed fire against a would-be attacker from any direction. Although his crews were new and barely tested in real combat, they were nonetheless confident, well-trained and quite calm. The RAF was all but destroyed, and whatever the enemy could field would be up against heavily armed bombers that could hit at British fighters with their heavy machine gun turrets long before the enemy was close enough for their .303 Browning machine guns to be effective.
A few kilometres behind them, II/SKG1 followed in a similar formation, and III Gruppe behind them. The air was freezing cold at that altitude, and the moisture and condensation from the hot exhausts of the bombers’ four powerful BMW twin-row radials crystallised and formed long, streaming contrails of ice stretching back the way they’d come. Those contrails could be seen from great distances, and were a clear indicator as to the formations’ positions at any given moment.
The Amerika Bomber was a huge aircraft, and was completely state-of-the art. Its streamlined, ‘glasshouse’ nose provided a superb view for its flight crew, while its gunners commanded their remote-controlled defensive turrets from a pressurised, heated compartment amidships. New analogue, computing gun sights produced by Carl Zeiss AG took into account aircraft speed, range and numerous other factors to produce accuracy far superior to manually aimed weapons, giving the turrets’ 13mm weapons an engagement range of almost 1,000 metres — close to double what would otherwise be possible.
Everything about the Messerschmitt Model 264 — designated B-10A by the RLM — was new and technologically advanced. Bauer and the rest of their crews felt as if they were flying aircraft years ahead of their time. Had they been provided the same insight into the future that some others possessed, they’d have known exactly how accurate those feelings were.
Fighters of I/- and II/JG54 circled around above the bombers in ‘finger-four’ formations, straining at the very limit of their service ceiling with pairs of 300-litre drop tanks beneath their wings. Most of the mission planners believed the bombers alone would have enough firepower to deal with whatever air threat the RAF could field, but it paid to be cautious. The fighter pilots kept a watchful eye on the skies around them — unlike their bomber colleagues, they were all hardened veterans who knew better than to take anything for granted.
The crews of the lead bombers and escorting fighters caught sight of distant contrails rising into the sky ahead to meet them a few moments later. To a man they almost laughed with relief and smug confidence as it became apparent that just two lone enemy aircraft had taken to the sky against them, albeit a pair of enemy that seemed to be approaching at extremely high speed. Bauer felt as if it were almost too easy, but transmitted orders for his crews to man and prepare their gun positions all the same. As each aircraft’s turrets powered up, they swivelled to face in the direction of the expected threat.
“We’ve got fighters buzzing around the heavies, Harbinger, so keep your distance and keep your airspeed up — they can’t catch you, but they can still hit you if you’re slow enough to give ‘em a chance,” Davies ventured over the radio as they drew to within forty kilometres of the lead formations, now climbing side by side.
“Roger, Phoenix-One… understood…” Trumbull’s sounded more confident and relaxed now: he was becoming accustomed to the environment around him, and his natural instincts as a fighter pilot had taken control.
“You’ll be okay, buddy,” Davies reassured, noting the increased confidence that had crept back into Trumbull’s tone. “Their guns can still hurt us close in, but they’ll only have old-fashioned ‘Eyeball-Mark-One’ to aim with, and a jet can be damned hard to hit at speed with manual guns. Trust your gun sights and your systems, and trust your instincts.” He paused and then added: “I’m going to start firing, so follow my lead. Good luck pal, and good hunting.”
With that encouragement, the Texan slewed the Raptor off to the north, giving himself some firing space before rippling off a salvo of AMRAAM missiles. Like the F-35, the F-22 was a stealthy aircraft that was designed to fly into combat ‘clean’, with all weapons stowed internally. Again, like the F-35, it was also fitted with the option to carry extra external ordnance in a ‘non-stealthy’ fashion. A pair of twin-rail launchers were also fitted beneath each of the Raptor’s wings, giving it eight extra AIM-120D missiles to complement the six normally carried within its main weapons bay. All eight of those extra missiles now streaked away from beneath the fighter, each leaving a trail of grey exhaust as they hurtled toward the enemy bombers at four times the speed of sound.